You, Orion reader, read more on our website this year than you ever have before. You loved old classics (Speaking of Nature, anyone?) and newer favorites (like this one, on a celebrity mushroom shroud). In the year of Oppenheimer, your mind was on radiation (two stories below favor the topic!), and fiction, science, and the story behind a delightful board game also moonlight on this list. As we bring 2023 to a close, add these ten pieces to your reading pile.
Arthur Jones
Invisible Landscapes
Jennifer Brandel
Scientists’ recent discovery of a “new” part of the human body, the interstitium, is an invitation to think differently about our relationship with the world at large.
John Holden/Unsplash
The Day the People Left
John Price
Imagining our pets after the rapture.
Stonemaier Games
The Unlikely Success of Wingspan
Faith Griffiths
How one anti-conquest, pro-conservation board game is bringing the outdoors to the table.
Terry Toedtemeier
Geography as Generosity:
An Afternoon with Barry Lopez
Robert MacFarlane
Reflections on the life and work of one of environmentalism’s most prolific writers.
Insiya Syed
The Crows of Karachi
Rafia Zakaria
When carrion birds rule, they forecast a coming end.
“Midnight Raven” by Isobelle Ouzman
Rewilding the Fairytale
Kaitlyn Teer
On the stories that help us survive.
Mads Eneqvist
Homesick
Zarina Zabrisky
A return to Chornobyl’s radiant landscape.
John Megahan
A Work of Love
Lulu Miller
Before gay marriage was legal in the United States, illustrator John Megahan was called to work on a revolutionary secret project: bringing to life, in painstaking scientific detail, the queer lives of the animal world.
Steven L. Hopp
A Whetstone to the Spirit:
An Interview with Barbara Kingsolver
Martha Schubert
‘The Poisonwood Bible’ author on mothering, farming, ecology, and life.
The Hanford B Reactor (davidjlee/Creative Commons)
The Atomic Disease
Rachel Greenley
On Oppenheimer’s atoms in the body.